אהרון הכהן מלוניל

Rav Aharon HaKohen of Lunel — Rav Aharon ben Yaakov HaKohen — was a rishon of the chachmei Provence at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, the author of the halachic compendium Orchot Chaim. He came of a family of rabbanim settled for generations in Provence: in his sefer he often brings his grandfather, Rav David ben Rav Yitzchak HaKohen, and at times halachot in the name of his great-grandfather, Rav Yitzchak HaKohen, a talmid of the Raavad. In the expulsion of 5066/1306 he was driven from Provence — “I wandered from my dwelling to a land of gloom,” he writes, “a land of darkness and waste… with no moreh tzedek” — and after long wanderings he settled in his last years on the island of Mallorca, where he learned under Rav Shem Tov Falco, whom he outlived.

The Orchot Chaim gathers halachot from the chachamim who came before him across the whole breadth of halachah, and stands as a witness to the minhagim of Provence. Its first chelek treats the halachot of weekday, Shabbat, and the moadim, parallel to the Tur Orach Chaim; the second spans subjects parallel to Yoreh De’ah, Even HaEzer, and Choshen Mishpat, together with chapters of mussar and emunah. Since he refers to the Rosh as one already departed, the sefer was completed after 5088/1327 — only a few years before the Arbaah Turim spread through the world and, being the more practical guide, pushed aside the codes that came before it. Among the poskim, though, the Orchot Chaim kept its standing: Rav Yosef Karo cites it hundreds of times in the Beit Yosef.

The first chelek was printed in Florence in 5512/1752 from the earlier of the work’s two editions; the second chelek waited until 5662/1902, when it was printed in Berlin from manuscripts of the later edition — the edition that had stood before the Beit Yosef. In our own day four sections of the work — hilchot haboker, hilchot berachot and tefillot, hilchot Shabbat, and hilchot Pesach with a perush on the Haggadah — have been printed anew by Or Etzion.